The convergence of art, money and patronage was the topic at D.C. Moore Gallery in Chelsea on Thursday night. Taking it on were Darren Waterston, one of the gallery’s artists, and the critic Dave Hickey, the iconoclastic author of “Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy” and “Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste.”
The occasion was Skira Rizzoli’s publication of “Filthy Lucre,” the catalog for Mr. Waterston’s installation of the same name, which reimagines James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room. The original room, built for a wealthy British patron to showcase his Chinese porcelain collection, was made over by Whistler when the owner was out of town, in sumptuous fashion. He painted over everything, added painted peacocks, and called it “Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room.” It is now regarded as a high-water mark of the aesthetic movement.
Mr. Waterston’s version, on exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass., presents the room in decay and desolation, with shattered pottery, sagging shelves and oozing liquids. A Dorian Gray in three dimensions, it bears sour witness to the corroding influence of money on art.
There was no meaningful inquiry into the evening’s stated subject, largely because Mr. Hickey is not really a topic kind of guy. He is a free-association kind of guy, a master of the out-of-left-field zinger. A sampling, in no particular order:
— “If the world were just, would Christo exist? No.”
— “I have been waiting for the dust-bunny movement.”
— “Artists are usually less crazy than collectors or patrons.”
And finally, on Whistler’s Peacock Room: “It seems to me a very nice work of art, if a little twee. I still can’t see why it’s considered decadent. But I lived in Las Vegas for 20 years.”